BCS DISCUSSION THEMES & BIBLIOGRAPHY

1st Week (5 Oct.)
       Introducing the Course against the Cultural Studies Context
Presentation of the aims and prerequisites of the course.
A short introduction to the methodology and agenda of cultural studies. Positioning the study of postcommunism and postcolonialism in the context of cultural studies.
Legitimating the comparative approach of postcommunism and postcolonialism in a British Cultural Studies programme.

2nd Week (12 Oct.)
What is Cultural Studies?
Mandatory reading (one of the following):
- „Cultural Studies” din The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism and Theory, editat de Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.
- Stuart Hall, „Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies” in S. During (ed.) The Cultural Studies Reader, Routledge 2001, pp. 97-109.
Further Reading
- Mircea Martin, „Cultural Studies – There and Here”, Euresis 2014, pag. 180-186.

3rd Week (19 Oct.)
The Power of Discourse – Language in/as action, language and representation. Discourse Study in Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Language
Mandatory reading:
- J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1962, 1-11;
- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,  Metaphors We Live By, London: University of Chicago Press, 2003 (1980), 8-22.

4th Week (26 Oct.)
SOFT APPROACHES I. The Discursive Turn in the study of societies and cultures. Language and power in the formation of cultural identity.
Mandatory reading:
- Michel Foucault, “The Order of Discourse”, R. Young (ed.), Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader, Boston & London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1981, 48-78.
(and one of the following)
- Ruth Wodak, “Introduction: Discourse Studies – Important Concepts and Terms”, R. Wodak and M. Krzyzanovski (eds.), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences, Houndmills & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 1-20;
or
- Bogdan Ştefănescu, Postcommunism / Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalternity, EUB 2013, 82-98.

5th Week (2 Nov.)
      MAIN CONCEPTS OF COLONIALITY – Coloniality, colonialisms, colonies; Colonialism versus imperialism, colonialism and modernity.
Mandatory reading:
- Bogdan Ştefănescu, Postcommunism / Postcolonialism: Siblings of Subalternity, EUB 2013, 47-65, 112-117.
and one of the following: 
- Osterhammel, Jürgen. Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publishers and Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1997 (1995), 1-22. or
- ‘Modernism’ and ‘modernity’ entries in Ashcroft, B. et alia, Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London & New York, Routledge, 1999 (1998), 143-7.
Further reading:
- ‘Imperialism’ and ‘neo-colonialism’ entries in Ashcroft, B. et alia, Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies. London & New York, Routledge, 1999 (1998). (pp. 122-7; 162-3)
- C. Venn. Occidentalism. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. (pp. 51-67)
- Ch. Jencks. The Post-modern Reader. London: Academy Editions/New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. (pp. 196-207; 250-66)
- M. Waters. Modernity: Critical Concepts. London & New York: Routledge, 1999. (vol.4, pp. 5-16)
- Th. Docherty, Postmodernism. A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Lond on, 1993, pp. 120-140, 323-363;
- R. Boyne, & A. Rattansi, Postmodernism and Society, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1990, pp. 1-70, 97-117;
- L. Hutcheon. The Politics of Postmodernism. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. (pp. 23-9) (L. Hutcheon. Politica postmodernismului. Bucuresti: Univers, 1997.)

6th Week (9 Nov.)
CONTRASTING POSTCOMMUNISM AND POSTCOLONIALISM: generic and typological similarities vs. historical and ideological differences.
Mandatory reading (one of the following): 
- David Chioni Moore, „Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Towards a Global Postcolonial Critique”, Violeta Kelertas (ed.) Baltic Postcolonialism, Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi,  2006, 11-44.
or 
- S. Chari and K. Verdery, „Thinking between the Posts: Postcolonialism, Postsocialism, and Ethnography after the Cold War”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51.1 (2009), 6–34.
or 
- Henry F. Carey and Rafal Raciborski, “Postcolonialism: A Valid Paradigm for the Former Sovietized States and Yugoslavia?”, East European Politics and Societies 18 (2004), 191-235.
Further reading:
- Adrian Otoiu. ‘An Exercise in Fictional Liminality: the Postcolonial, the Postcommunist, and Romania’s Threshold Generation’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 23:1&2 (2003) (pp. 87-95) http://www.cssaame.com/issues/23/15.pdf  
- Boris Buden. ‘Ce este postcolonial in postcomunism?’.  Suplimentul de cultura nr. 144, 8 – 14 septembrie 2007 www.suplimentuldecultura.ro/numarpdf/144_Special.pdf- Lefter, I.B.  ‘Poate fi considerat postcomunismul un post-colonialism?’. Caietele Echinox, vol. 1, (‘Postcolonialism & Postcomunism’), Cluj: Dacia, 2001. (pp. 117-119) 

7th Week (16 Nov.)
      The coloniality of (post)dependent cultures: Cultural trauma as unifying concept for Western and Soviet coloniality - I
Mandatory reading (one of the following):
- Piotr Sztompka, “The Trauma of Social Change: A Case of Postcommunist Societies”, J. Alexander et al. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity, University of California Press, 2004, 149-189.
or 
- Rebecca Saunders and Kamran Aghaie, “Introduction: Mourning and Memory”, Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East vol. 25, no.1 (2005), 16-29;

Further reading:
- Bogdan Ștefănescu, “Filling in the Historical Blanks: A Tropology of the Void in Postcommunist and Postcolonial Reconstructions of Identity”, D, Pucherova and R. Gafrik (eds.) Postcolonial Europe? Essays on Post-Communist Literatures and Cultures, Brill/Rodopi, 2015, 107-120.

8th Week (23 Nov.)
 The coloniality of (post)dependent cultures: Cultural trauma as unifying concept for Western and Soviet coloniality - II
Mandatory reading (one of the following): 
- Robert Eaglestone, “’You Would Not Add to My Suffering If You Knew What I Have Seen”: Holocaust Testimony and Contemporary African Trauma Literature’, Studies in the Novel vol. 40, 1&2 (2008), 72-85.
or
- Kiossev, Alexander, “Notes on Self-colonising Cultures”, Art and Culture in post-Communist Europe. Eds. B. Pejic. & D. Elliott. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999, 114-8. and Aili Aarelaid-Tart, Cultural Trauma and Life Stories (Estonia), Kikimora Publications, 2006, pp. 57-61.

9th Week (7 Dec.)
Main Concepts of Postcolonial Cultural Studies and their potential applicability in Postcommunist Cultural Studies
Mandatory reading:
- Entries for agency, alienation, authenticity, cartography, center/margin, comprador, creolization, counter-discourse, cultural diversity/difference, dependency theory, essentialism, Eurocentrism, exotic(ism), hybridity, liminality, negritude, Orientalism, subaltern, world systems theory in Ashcroft, B. et alia, Key Concepts in Post-colonial Studies, London & New York: Routledge, 1999 (1998).
Further reading:
- Amia Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge, 1998.

10th Week (14 Dec.)
       The West and the rest. Self and exotic other in the creation of European identity.
Mandatory reading (either a. or b.):
a) - Edward W. Said, “Introduction,” Orientalism, new and rev. ed., New York: Vintage Books, 1994 (1983), 1-28.
- Milica Bakic-Hayden, „Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia”,  Slavic Review, 54. 4 (1995), pp. 917-931.
or
b)- Mbembe, Achille. On the Postcolony. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001, 1-23.
- Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 1-16.
Further reading:
- „Postcolonial Cultural Studies” din The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism and Theory, editat de Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth, The Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, „Can the Subaltern Speak?”, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, 1988.
- Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994, 66-84.

11th Week (4 Jan.)
Main Concepts of Postcommunist Cultural Studies and their potential applicability in Postcolonial Cultural Studies.
Mandatory reading (one of the following – a or b):
a) - Entries for Balkanism, postcommunism, communization/decommunization, transition, wooden language in Monica Bottez et al. Postcolonialism/Postcommunism: Dictionary of Key Cultural Terms, EUB 2011.
- Bogdan Ștefănescu, „Viză respinsă. Anevoioasele călătorii teoretice dintre lumea postcolonială şi cea postcomunistă”, Dus-întors. Rute ale teoriei literare în modernitate, ed. de Oana Fotache, Magda Răduță, Adrian Tudurachi, Humanitas, 2016.
or
b) - Monika Albrecht (ed.). “Introduction” to Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Neocolonial Present. London, New York: Routledge., 2019, pp. 1-47.
- Dumitru Tucan, “The Adaptability of Theory: Postcolonialism Vs. Postcommunism in Romanian Literary Studies”, in Dacoromania litteraria vol.II / 2015, pp. 101-116.
Further reading:
- Steven Totosy de Zepetnek, “Comparative Cultural Studies and the Study of Central European Culture”, Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek (ed.), Comparative Central European Culture. West Lafayette: Purdue UP 2002, 1-12.
- Dusan I. Bjelic & Obrad Savic (eds.), Balkan as Metaphor, MIT Press, 2002.
- Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3-20, 161-189.

12th Week (11 Jan.)
The Other(ing of) Europe.
Mandatory reading:
- Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, 1-16.
- Milica Bakic-Hayden, „Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia”,  Slavic Review, 54. 4 (1995), pp. 917-931.

13th Week (?)
     THE MISSING LINK: SOVIET EASTERN EUROPE AND THE THRID WORLD - The Connection between the Second and Third World in a Colonial Context.
Mandatory reading:
- Benyamin Neuberger, “The African Concept of Balkanisation”, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (1976), 523-529.
- Monica Popescu, “Lewis Nkosi in Warsaw: Translating eastern European experiences for an African audience”, Journal of Postcolonial Writing Vol. 48, No. 2 (2012), 176–187.
Further reading:
- Eboe Hutchful, “Eastern Europe: Consequences for Africa”, Review of African Political Economy, No. 50, Africa in a New World Order (Mar.,1991), 51-59.
- Ádám Mayer, „Afrikanizacija: Eastern European Epistemologies and African Labour”,  Intersections. EEJSP 2.1 (2016), 54-73.
- S. Mestrovic. The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism. London & NY: Routledge, 1994.

14th Week (?) 
    PREPARATION AND TUTORING FOR FINAL ESSAY.